An approachable, beautiful refinement of the GameCube original.
The game pushed visual boundaries, with dense, moody environments and a solid 60fps frame-rate target.
The lighting upgrade is completed by the addition of new light sources, while existing objects gain emissive properties.
There’s even static volumetric-style lighting in many spots that looks quite convincing.
There is one caveat here though.
In the original Metroid Prime, beam weapons cast dynamic lights throughout the environment when you fired them.
Remastered lacks these effects outside of smaller corridors.
The game is still a massive step up from the original release, but this concession is worth noting.
Metroid Prime’s models and textures have also been completely remade for this version.
Remastered does a good job of keeping things in a sort of rough alignment with the original.
Most of the novel effects from the original game have been replicated here too.
The visor still occasionally fogs up, gets covered in guts or shows the reflection of Samus’s face.
Performance is very straightforward, which is a good thing.
The mildly sub-native presentation is scarcely an issue - Remastered just looks awesome on a seven-inch screen.
Metroid Prime is still a fantastic game.
The visual improvements help enormously as well, of course.
Oddly enough, Retro’s overall approach reminds me a lot ofHalo 2Anniversary.
Remastered is a top-quality modernisation of a classic game, and it’s well worth your time.
